Bullet In Legislator's Staircase Could Be Result Of Income Tax Ire

October 06, 1991|By GERALD JACOBS ; Courant Staff Writer

GUILFORD — A slug found lodged Saturday in a staircase in the home of state Rep. Janet Poss, D-Guilford, may have been fired earlier this week by someone angry over her vote in favor of a state income tax, police said.

Poss, of 143 N. Fair St., told local police Saturday afternoon that she and her husband discovered a bullet hole in the front of their house, Officer Robert Dube said. Police found a slug buried in a staircase inside the home, Dube said.

Neighbors told police that they thought they had heard a gunshot in the neighborhood between 8:30 and 9 p.m. Thursday night, Dube said. They also heard a car pulling away fast.

Poss was home with her husband, Eliasz, and son, David, Thursday night, but they were in a rear room when the incident occurred, she said.

"I thought it sounded like a rifle shot," Poss said Saturday night. She said she went outside Thursday night to look around for anything suspicious, but found nothing.

David Poss found a hole in a door inside the house Saturday morning, which led to the discovery of the bullet hole in the house's exterior and the bullet itself, embedded a couple of inches into a staircase.

"If someone was walking through that room, they could have been hit," she said.

Poss, a first-term legislator, has voted consistently for all of the state budget plans that included an income tax, and she said she has received many harassing phone calls because of her stand. She is angry but not scared about the incident, she said.

"It makes me feel angry, someone going to that length," she said. "I'm much more likely to be convinced by rational discourse than someone firing a gun at my house." Poss also said there was "no way" she could support repeal of the income tax unless a viable alternative is offered to relieve the state's budget deficit.